{"id":41714,"date":"2018-02-02T08:49:30","date_gmt":"2018-02-02T13:49:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.technologyinvestor.com\/?p=41714"},"modified":"2018-02-02T08:49:30","modified_gmt":"2018-02-02T13:49:30","slug":"i-hope-you-own-lots-of-amazon","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.technologyinvestor.com\/?p=41714","title":{"rendered":"I hope you own lots of Amazon"},"content":{"rendered":"

Amazon last night reported fourth quarter sales up\u00a038%<\/strong> to $60.5 billion.\u00a0Operating income increased 69%<\/strong> to $2.1 billion in the fourth quarter, compared with operating income of $1.3 billion in fourth quarter 2016.<\/p>\n

These are incredible growth numbers for a large company.<\/p>\n

Amazon started as a book seller — the lowest margin business in the entire world. Now look at it. It’s makes sophisticated electronics on which outsiders are develop. It runs AWS, Amazon Web services, the largest computing cloud. And it sells and ships everything from bluetooth ear buds to tennis racquets, from frying pans to Norelco hair nose trimmers — all of which I’ve bought just this week alone.<\/p>\n

“Our 2017 projections for Alexa were very optimistic, and we far exceeded them. We don’t see positive surprises of this magnitude very often — expect us to double down,” said Jeff Bezos, Amazon founder and CEO. “We’ve reached an important point where other companies and developers are accelerating adoption of Alexa. There are now over 30,000 skills from outside developers, customers can control more than 4,000 smart home devices from 1,200 unique brands with Alexa, and we’re seeing strong response to our new far-field voice kit for manufacturers.”<\/p>\n

There’s a section in last night’s quarterly report labeled Highlights.<\/em> Some samples:<\/p>\n

+ In 2017, more than five billion items shipped with Prime worldwide.<\/p>\n

+ More new paid members joined Prime in 2017 than any previous year — both worldwide and in the U.S.<\/p>\n

+ Fire TV Stick and Echo Dot were the best-selling products in 2017 across all of Amazon. Customers purchased tens of millions of Echo devices last year.<\/p>\n

+ The Alexa Skills store now offers more than 30,000 skills, including new developer tools for Alexa Gadgets and gaming experiences, such as Activision’s new Ghost skill for console game Destiny 2. Other new categories of skills include daily beauty podcasts from Hearst, All-Star game voting from the NBA, and more. Customers can also now use Alexa to control more than 4,000 smart home devices from 1,200 unique brands.<\/p>\n

+ Amazon hired nearly 130,000 employees globally in 2017, excluding acquisitions. Additionally, Amazon now employs more than 17,500 veterans and military spouses across the U.S., and plans to hire over 10,000 more by 2021.<\/p>\n

+ Amazon launched two furniture brands: Rivet, offering affordable and versatile mid-century modern furniture ideal for smaller spaces; and Stone & Beam, offering durable and stylish furniture for the modern household.<\/p>\n

+ Amazon Go, a new kind of store with no checkout required, is now open to the public in Seattle. The checkout-free shopping experience is made possible by the same types of technologies used in self-driving cars: computer vision, machine learning, and sensor fusion.<\/p>\n

+ AWS announced\u00a0AWS Media Services, a family of five integrated broadcast-quality media services that make it easy for video providers of all kinds to create reliable, flexible, and scalable video offerings in the cloud. These five services enable customers to build end-to-end workflows for both live and on-demand video with the professional features, image quality, and reliability needed to deliver premium video experiences to viewers across a multitude of devices. By combining the proven video solutions from AWS Elemental with the security, durability, availability, and scalability of AWS, video providers can focus on innovating and making great content instead of spending time building and maintaining on-premises video infrastructure.<\/p>\n

Amazon is going after Apple, Google, IBM, YouTube, movie theaters, and every retail store in the universe, and succeeding. And now the health care biz. It’s beautiful to watch.<\/p>\n

There’s oodles more. Do yourself a favor and read last night’s full release. Click here.<\/a>\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

Here’s Amazon over the past ten years. The chart is a thing of beauty. It will be up big today.<\/p>\n

\"AMZN10years\"<\/a><\/p>\n

The Big Ripoff. <\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

Open a a savings account at three big banks and be paid\u00a0per year…wait for this:<\/p>\n

Citi pays 0.04%, Bank of America 0.03%, Chase Bank 0.01%.<\/p>\n

It’s not all miserable:<\/p>\n

DollarSavingsDirect, UFB Direct, and PurePointFinancial pay 1.60% — sixteen times as much as Citi, Bank of America and Chase.<\/p>\n

CIT Bank and the Incredible Bank (yes, it’s called that) pay 1.50%.<\/p>\n

And — drum roll — Goldman Sachs Bank USA pays 1.50%.<\/p>\n

The amazing thing is there’s absolutely no difference between any of the banks. They’re all insured by the FDIC. …Oops there is a difference. Some are all Internet banks and some staff their phones 24\/7. Some of the big banks are heavy on paperwork. Excessively so.<\/p>\n

The best place to find all sorts of banking rates is from\u00a0Bankrate.com<\/strong><\/a>. That’s where I got all this information from.<\/p>\n

The Bankrate web site has rates for everything from mortgages, to loans, to credit cards, etc.<\/p>\n

Stupidity is having your short-term cash in a big bank. Real stupidity is not having your long-term cash in the stockmarket.<\/p>\n

All that said…<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

The latest web site craze is offering you and I consumers a “free”service locating and ranking
\nhotels (e.g. TripAdvisor), airlines, credit cards, home repair contractors, and of course, banking information (see above).<\/p>\n

Be aware all “free” services aren’t. These sites have to get paid somehow. And that typically means it’s from the companies they’re so nicely rating for you and me. Which means you may not see your favorite hotel, or it may be ranked low.\u00a0 In short, be wary. Ranking works often by payback and commission.<\/p>\n

My friend owns a Tesla. <\/strong><\/span>Think Creative Destruction. Now read the story.<\/p>\n

\"Tesla\"<\/a><\/p>\n

He loves his Tesla. He says it has only 22 moving parts. They’re all sealed.<\/p>\n

The car never needs service. And he never services it.<\/p>\n

I just took Susan’s 2013 Mercedes Hybrid in for a service. It was $160. Our local Mercedes dealer wanted $500, but they’d give us a free tank of gas and an Exxon\/Mobil $50 gift card.<\/p>\n

That’s what you call desperation — when your customers (the local dealer sold us the car) don’t come back for service.<\/p>\n

There’s more here.<\/p>\n

Think of the time\u00a0in the not too distant future when all of us are driving electric cars and there are no more cars to service. I repeat: No more cars to service.<\/p>\n

That’s called creative destruction.<\/p>\n

Think of what Netflix did to Blockbuster. This is much worse — if you own an auto dealership. But much better if you own an electric car.<\/p>\n

What technology does Andrew Ross Sorkin love?<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

His “single best device” is Apple’s $159 AirPods.<\/p>\n

\"aoirpods\"<\/a><\/p>\n

I got excited by his logic and bought my self a $27.59\u00a0SoundPEATS Bluetooth Headphones:<\/p>\n

\"SoundPeats\"<\/a><\/p>\n

They seem to do the same thing as the Apple Air Pods. We’ll see. I received them last night — one day delivery from Amazon for $5! Buy yours here.<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

You can read about Andrew Ross Sorkin’s favorite tech gadgets here.<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

Give thanks you don’t live in Venezuela<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

If you’ve ever wondered how misguided socialism can destroy a country, look no further than Venezuela. My dear friend, Antonio Mora, has writtten a brilliant place detailing exactly what’s happened there. The headline is\u00a0\u00a0Venezuela: Making the Great Depression look like a mild recession. <\/em>Click here.<\/a>\u00a0<\/strong>And feel happy you don’t live here.<\/p>\n

New York’s only tramway<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

It connects Manhattan with Roosevelt Island in the middle of the East River.<\/p>\n

The Island now sports Cornell’s new 12-acre engineering\/technology campus. It’s still under construction and will ultimately look like this.<\/p>\n

\"CornellUniversity\"<\/a><\/p>\n

But what’s finished — quite a bit — is truly spectacular. The cafeteria is open to the public. I had breakfast there on Wednesday. The views were wonderful.<\/p>\n

I went to the Island on the tramway — New York’s only one — and enjoyed these stunning early morning views. It was 7:10 AM. I love the sun’s reflection off the building<\/p>\n

\"Tram2\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\"Tram1\"<\/a><\/p>\n

That’s the 59th Street bridge of Simon and Garfunkel fame. Listen to their\u00a059th Street Bridge Song<\/em> here.<\/a>\u00a0<\/strong>Lyrics include Slow down, you move too fast.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

Slow down. Enjoy my iPhone photos.<\/p>\n

Another Super Bowl story for this weekend<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

At the Super Bowl a man sat unhappily in his Super Bowl seat, in the highest row behind the end zone.<\/p>\n

Way below he spots an empty seat on the 50-yard line.<\/p>\n

He descends all the way down to it and asks the man sitting next to the empty spot why such a good Super Bowl seat remains unoccupied.<\/p>\n

The man says, \u201cIt\u2019s mine. I was supposed to come with my wife, but she died. This is the first Super Bowl since 1967 we have not attended together.\u201d<\/p>\n

The first man says: \u201cBut couldn\u2019t you find a friend or relative to come with you today?\u201d<\/p>\n

The man replies: \u201cNope, they\u2019re all at the funeral.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"HarryNewton\"<\/a>
\nHarry Newton, who’s having a truly wonderful week. Michael, son, is in town. This morning we’re off to play tennis at Roosevelt Island Racquet Club, the best place to play tennis in the City. The club is under a gigantic, heated bubble. Total bliss.<\/p>\n